We just talked about how people end up being rude when trying to avoid the thing where one person thinks they are heading towards couple-hood and the other thinks they’re having fun — and I can’t tell you how many bad fwb stories I hear that involve one person saying, “I can’t believe she stopped sleeping with me, I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone!”

That, along with a whole lot of other problems, can be avoided with communication.

Talk to each other about your boundaries, about what’s going on in your dating life, and generally keep everyone on the same page.

They stumble into being “friends” with benefits because they meet someone they find attractive, but one of them isn’t really interested in dating, so they say, “Fine, we’ll be friends with benefits” — but there’s no actual friendship.

Conventional wisdom says that once sex enters the equation you can’t really build a “friendship.”

I call shenanigans on that, and there’s even evidence to back me up! When 300 people were asked what having sex with their friends did to the friendship, about 76% of those who “went there” with a friend said the relationship got better. Better!

The reality is that about half of these folks started dating their friend after the fun, even though that wasn’t their original intention. And the other half not only remained friends, but friends who said the “quality of the friendship bond increased.”

I know this may seem counter-intuitive, as FWB situations are born when folks who are in need of sex decide to have it with each other and not take the relationship any farther, but when your bed buddy is the only thing going on in your sexual life, it’s easy for that person to become the entire embodiment of your romantic life — and then, of course, you fixate on them.

Maintaining your dating and sex life elsewhere allows you to enjoy time with your friend without relying on them for all your sexual release, validation, affection, romance, etc.

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